Ala bama's offense is really good; defense not so much. They have two hitters with almost 20 HRs and 2 hitters with around 40 stolen bases.

Traina is good but she's hittable. UM actually has more trouble with "pitchers" - those that have lots of changes of speed, good location, drop balls, etc. One of their losses this year was to the University of South Florida. Everyone says WTF but USF is in the sweet 16 as an unranked team vs Hofstra, another unranked team with a great pitcher (Galati).

I meant pitching (as I was reaching for a comparison to football). No disagreement on the stolen bases and whatnot, that was MGB's first comment about a M/Alabama matchup, the disparity between stolen bases.

I'm trying to load that ESPN3.com website to watch the game but my AOL is very slow and is rarely capable of downloading videos. Is there anywhere else I can watch the game? I have 500 some channels on the television, but I can never find anything I want to see. I have the channel numbers for ESPN, ESPN 2, and the major networks written down on a pad, but I would appreciate an exact channel number. Can anyone help?

No, I pay for my internet, unlike the people who download it for free and cost the rest of us! And AOL is fine for me, I don't need all the fancy additions they charge a premium for over on Comcast, bunch of customer-hating scoundrels over there. And I prefer to buy American.

They have a DH (which they call the Designated Player--DP--for no logical reason), and unlike baseball you can DP for anybody on the field. They choose to have pitcher Haylie Wagner bat and the DP instead hits for the catcher, Lauren Sweet.

This is something I've wondered for a while. If a school has an iconic helmet (that can easily be identified with "the brand") why the hell do they not use it in softball? Shouldn't M have winged batting helmets and Alabama have crimson helmets with the A on the side along with numbers and ND have gold helmets? I do not like it one bit that no schools seem to realize this (M, Alabama, Texas, ND especially).

And I know that the hockey goalies almost always modify their helmets to some extent, but couldn't the brim be all blue and have the top of the helmet have wings? And for ND, Alabama and Texas it would be even easier.

(I actually have an old school winged cap like the first with a blue brim, but it's so old, good luck finding an internet pic of it. Actually found an identical back up at Salvation Army that had never been used for when that one wears out).

Edit: On a semi-related note- is it really fair that ESPN's Road to the World Series commercial features all these smoking women from different teams? I don't see them saying "Peyton Manning, you're talented, and pretty darn funny, but you're just too goofy looking for us to put you in our commercials."

was quite reasonable. After that one bad call I thought the zone was consistent. Traina can hit spots all around the zone, except I didn't notice many low spots. Those few in the dirt may have been drops. She is as good as advertised.

In the last two innings we started swinging earlier in the count. I bet we see more of that tomorrow.